Sequim Gazette Editorial and Letters to the Editor

So 2009 has come, roaring round the bend, chasing 2008 over the hill, whipped by a tailwind of change.

Not that the old year went quietly.

Sure, the feisty newcomer filled 2008 with trepidation as the graybeard trudged along, dragging his cracked hourglass, the last of its leaking sand leaving a telltale trail behind him as he disappeared into the sunset where past years spend eternity telling each other lies.

But 2008's qualms could be traced to a generational thing.

No wonder the old boy was a tad perplexed. Who wouldn't wonder what the world is coming to when Kanye West actually sings on a new CD?

Generational bewilderment notwithstanding, 2008 leaves us as a year to remember. He wasn't a wimp like 2007, with just a humdrum natural disaster or two, a stale couple of wars and some piddling pestilence to his name.

No, 2008 thought big, causing a cataclysmic earthquake in China, bringing the economy to its knees with a series of financial seismic shocks, then hitting us upside the head with a Christmas so white even Santa had to call a tow truck to extricate his sleigh from my unplowed street.

Winter wonderland? Get off my lawn, wherever it is.

Those were minor compared to 2008's major contribution.

Although to use the word hope in conjunction with Barack Obama is becoming somewhat clichéd, 2008 forever linked the two.

Obama's historic election as the first African American U.S. president showed that dreams can come true, provided you wait long enough - or rather, in this case, too long.

I welcome 2009 with more anticipation, more eagerness, more just plain hope, clichéd or not, than any year I can remember in a long time.

It was a shock when, as a kid from a mixed-racial Southern California beach town in the late 1950s, I suddenly found myself way out of my element, in a North Carolina airport, gawking at signs over the drinking fountains and rest rooms that proclaimed, "Whites Only" and "Coloreds Only."

That was 50 years ago, and after that experience, I never thought I would see an African American president in my lifetime.

As the years passed, I further reasoned that if my country can make "Dancing with the Stars" its favorite TV show, it probably will go on forever electing reincarnations of the same old white guy (no matter his chronological age or party), wearing the same old suit and tie, spouting the same old partisan politics.

As Gore Vidal pointed out, the 20th century ended with a succession of comic presidents.

Then we began the 21st with one who would have been an absolute laughing stock if his foreign policy hadn't been so daunting.

But along came 2008, and my fellow citizens finally had the last laugh.

I enter 2009 actually believing, for a change, that my president won't embarrass me or my country.

I'm not even bummed at the prospect of turning 70 in April. Who cares about that? It's just another day.

The really important date is Jan. 20, when Obama takes office, with his cool, his sense of style and the kind of political pragmatism not seen since John Kennedy.

I'm going to feel young - and hopeful.



Jim Guthrie's journalism career has spanned 41 years with newspapers in California and Washington. He is interested in playwriting and poetry and lives in Port Angeles.